Hi! This is my attempt at starting a small blog about, what is in my eyes, the golden age of Horror Anthology Paperbacks and a huge passion of mine. Update: I've realized that what is even more important is the people have to be made aware of these wonderful stories before they disappear forever. Most the the stories I mention here haven't been reprinted in over 40 years and most likley will never been seen again. They will be lost to us once these books are gone and forgotten. How sad.

Sonntag, 26. Februar 2012

John the Balladeer

By Manly Wade Wellman.

Baen Books 1988

Hi Folks, it’s going to be a shorter post this week. The sun is shining, it’s pushing 50° and I have some garden work to do!

I had a hard time on deciding whether a paperback from 1988 qualifies as “vintage” or not. In my eyes since I was already married for a year back then and close to being 30 than 20 it isn’t really all so “vintage” to me. But then I decided, ”what the hell”. If you’re under 40 then I guess that you would consider this a vintage paperback.

I’ve been in love with the ManlyWade Wellman’s “Silver John” stories since I first read “The Desrick on Yandro” in “Alfred Hitchcock’s MonsterMuseum” back in the late 1960s. Of course I didn’t know back then that this was part a series of short stories and (much later on) and novels. When I was small we would drive down from Ohio to North Carolina to visit my maternal Grand Parents. The road over the Mountains was still 2 lanes back then between the West Virginian Turn Pike andMt. AiryNorth Carolina (Andy and Barney country.). You didn’t have Interstate 77 back then. You had to take the old Rt. 52. It was an amazing drive that took more than 5 hours to cross over the Blue Ridge Mts. There were forest covered mountains as far as the eye could see and to a 10 year old “Buckeye” it was amazing and a little bit frightening since you never new what was out there. I know now though. It was the world of “John the Balladeer”. My Dad, being a joker” claimed that there was a little lost Indian boy who we needed to keep an eye out for. This he explained, was why we constantly saw road signs which said “Watch for Falling Rocks”. Back then, you were a real cut up Dad! :-)

To keep it short, “Silver John” aka “John the Balladeer” is a Korean War veteran from the SmokyMountains of North Carolina who wanders the back roads and forgotten places of the Appalachian Mountain chain running from Virginia down to northern Georgia. Armed with only his silver strung guitar, wits, courage, a small book of bible inspired counter charmsand a very strong faith in God and Jesus, John does battle with the forces of evil haunting the eastern mountains and her peoples.

Wellman settled in the SmokeyMountains of North Carolina and feel in love with her people and folkways. This shows in the entire series of Silver John stories which were mostly published in “The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction back in the 1950s. The stories take place in an Appalachia that never was but should have been. His mountains are populated with proud God fearing people who are often besieged by supernatural forces that exist only in Appalachian folk lore. These stories are a love song to the mountains and her people. Even if these people are living simple lives in a simpler world, they are treated with the utmost respect. This is just is one of the things that make these stories work so well. These stories also receive a timeless quality by all taking place in the forgotten/hidden places of the mountains. John being a humble mover and shaker makes him a sympathetic narrator who never comes off as boastful. An lastly the huge list of supernatural entities and “monsters” that exist only in this mountain world gives the stories a flavour that is found no where else. This book is still in print and available by Amazon or you can read it online here at Baen Books!

Table of Contents

O Ugly Bird!The Desrick on YandroVandy, VandyOne OtherCall Me From the ValleyThe Little Black TrainShiver in the PinesWalk Like a MountainOn the Hills and EverywhereOld Devlins Was A-WaitingNine Yards of Other ClothWonder as I Wander:Farther Down the TrailTrill Coster's BurdenThe SpringOwls Hoot in the DaytimeCan These Bones Live?Nobody Ever Goes ThereWhere Did She Wander?

This week’s
blog’ll be a little different. I’m going to discuss a novel and not an
Anthology.

I first
came across Mr. Leiber’s “Our Lady of Darkness” in the January 1977 issue of “Fantasy
& SF” under the title of “Pales Brown Thing”. It was serialized in two
parts. January and February 1977. This was the first novel of Fritz Leiber’s
that I had ever read. Up to this time I had only read a few of his short
stories. This was also the first work of “Horror/Dark Fantasy” that I had read
which was set in the modern world. Lastly this was the very first issue(s) of
F&SF that I had ever read. We had had a terrible snow storm in Ohio and I was so crazy to get out of
the house (I had just turned 16 a few months earlier.) to get a book that I
walked all the way down town through
fairly deep snow and single digit temperatures just to GET SOMETHING TO READ!.
This show how much of a reading junkie I was. I can still remember going into O’Coons
Drug Store on the Square and going over the paperback selection. The kept the
SF mags with the paperbacks. I saw the amazing cover of the January 77 issue of
F&SF and thought that I’d give it a try. I was so impressed with Part One
of Leiber’s novel that I couldn’t wait for the next issue to come out.

“Our Lady
of Darkness” is a wonderful Dark/Urban Fantasy.
Can’t honestly call it a horror novel, but that makes no difference. Fritz
Leiber was a man who could write amazingly well in the genres of SF, Fantasy
and oddball horror. That is a very rare talent. His works have also aged
amazingly well. He was one of those few artists (yes artist) who could do
social criticism/commentary without getting preachy or ham handed about it. He
entertained and challenged at the same time. I wish more writers would learn
how to do this.

Here’s the descriptive
text on the back cover………..

“On the
bright San Francisco morning that Westen saw the gray, shadow-boned
horror peering out at him from his own
apartment window, the city became a realm of terror with no escape. For
this evil-spawn lurked in every airshaft and alleyway, feeding on the despair
and screams of the modern city as the daemons of old fed on the fears of their
dark age. It had choosen him, and it had choosen well…As terrifying as THE
EXORCIST, as chilling as SALEMS LOT, OUR LADY OF DARKNESS explores the
nightmare forms of the supernatural in the modern age.”

Damn! That
sound like a good book.

This is one
of those cases where the description is simultaneously 100% correct and false.

This comes
of as a very “Lovecraftian” story. It is and it isn’t. It is much more of a “Jamesian”
story than “Lovecraftian”. I think this is the only way they thought they could
market the book since H.P. Lovecraft is more well know in American than M. R.James.

I want to
talk more about marketing later on though.

The story
on the surface sounds extremely simple. A writer of horror paperbacks who is
also a recovering alcoholic buys an old journal in a used bookstore. It turns
out this is the journal kept by “Clark Ashton Smith” while he was living in San Francisco around the time of WWI where he
became involved in a sort of estoteric cult. The leader of this cult espoused a
theory called “megapolisomancy“. As far as my limited intelligence understands
it, Megapolisomancy deals with how large citys become generators and attractors
of psychic energies and para-natural beings and how these beings and energies
can be manipulated. The writer “Jack London” was also a member of this group. Sounds
kind of “Lovecraftian” to me.

The journal
describes how many members met terrible ends after breaking away from the cult.

Weston, the narrator of “Our Lady,”is actually
Fritz Leiber himself. All of the locations described in the story are real.
Leiber was living in the “Tenderloin” district of SF during the time he wrote
the book. This comes through in all of the descriptions in the book. The
building Weston lives in, the neighbourhood, the surrounding area and even the
main focal point of the story “CoronaHeights”.
Weston becomes haunted by the forces described in smith’s journal and
the novel describes how Weston tries to understand why he is pursued and how he attempts to defeat these forces. The
book is fairly short but dense. He throws out so many quotes and references
that there is even a site online annotating all of this. It doesn’t detract
from the novel if you don’t follow up the quote and references. These add more
depth and almost come across as insider jokes for fans of old pulp fiction and
esoterica, but aren’t necessary to enjoying the story.The book is a lot of fun
while it provides a supernatural mystery straight out of an M.R. James story
and acts (now) as a time capsule of mid 1970s San Francisco. All in all, it is
an extremely satisfying work and a quick read. It’s still available at Amazon.

Let’s talk
about marketing now. The original cover of the book fit the story perfectly.
The cover doesn’t say anything about the story, but is very evocative of “weirdness”
and believe me, this story just reeks of “weirdnes”. Now if you look at the
newest incarnation of this novle you’ll immediately get a sense of “what the
hell are they trying to pull here?”

It’s
obvious that instead of trying to sell the novel on its own merits they are
trying to rope in the “Twilight/paranormal romance/goth chick lit” crowd. The new
cover just screams “Twilight” you. This is extremely dishonest of the
publisher. I think that the true
audience for this novel would walk right by and the folks buying this based on
the new cover will probably be seriously pissed off.

Before we go on, here are a few wonderful sites covering "Our Lady of Darkness".

To show how
the market/readership/fandom has changed over the years and how all pervasive
the “Twilight” novels have become (or at least how much power and influence
retailers have give them.) is shown here.

I was
looking at DVDs last year when I ran across these. At first I passed them on
with barely a glimpse, but then the alarm bell went off. Part of the film
titles seemed familiar. I looked again and thought “They have to be kidding!!!.
I’ve been waiting for ages for these films to come out on DVD over here and
this is how they market them???”

In Germany the films are rated by viewer
age. For example:

“Care Bears”:
No restriction.

“Disney’s Snow
White”. 6 years and up.

“Lord of
the Rings”. 12 years and up.

“Halloween
II (the original 1981 version.): 18 years and up and heavily censored too!

The laws
were changed last year stating that the rating can’t be on the back cover
anymore. It has to be on the front DVD cover in huge print. Now this (for some
of us.) ruins otherwise possibly attractive poster/cover art. Thankfully many
of the companies bring out the newer DVDs with reversible covers. They are back
printed with out the rating on the art.

Now these
DVDs also came with reversible covers.

This is unbelievable
how dishonest these bastards are. Those who want these films walk right by while
those who buy them aren’t getting what the think they are.

Well that
it for this week. Thanks once again for stopping by. If any of you have any
suggestions or complaint just leave a comment. I’m doing this for you and me,
but without any readers it becomes kind of pointless to share my obsession with
an empty room.

This is a nice little collection put out by Ace books back in 1959. I love the cover on this one. Can’t find out who did it though. This was put together by Mr.” DAW Books” himself, Donald A. Wollheim.

This paperback offers a pretty good selection of stories. Several of which have been repeatedly anthologized these past 53 years. All of these stories are either reprints from “Weird Tales” or from WT’s short lived competitor “Strange Tales of Mystery and Terror”. Ok, and one from Esquire.

McClusky’s “The Crawling Horror” is a pretty good “blob” story that Brian Lumley did a good take one in “David’s Worm”. At least the endings are pretty much the same.

“It will grow on you” by Donald Wandrei is a pretty niftly cautionary tale about a very disturbing boil that refuses to be lanced! So don’t go pissing of those South SeasIsland girls!

I’m a huge “Henry S. Whitehead“ fan and he’s represented here with “The Trap”. This was co-written by H.P. Lovecraft. It’s an odd one about a boy at a Boarding School who gets sucked into mirror once owned by an evil sorcerer. It’s up to one of his instructors to mount a rescue.

I think the creepiest thing about this story is how much time the narrator spends with young boys in his quarters during the holiday recess. This one isn’t nearly as good a many of Whitehead’s Caribbean Voodoo stories though.

“The Thing on the Doorstep” is an excellent “Mythos” story from HPL with some veeeery disturbing sexual connotations. Guy marries a slutty little bohemian black magic dabbling hottie from Innsmouth who, SPOILER, just happens to just be the vessel for her fathers soul! That must have been a wild wedding night! Phew!

“The Curse of Yig” written by Zealia Brown Bishop was actually ghosted by HPl. This gives us 1x pure HPl, 1x Co-written HPl and 1x pure HPl! Plus two HPl Poems. I guess Wollheim knew a good thing when he saw it. Any ways “The Curse of Yig” isn’t all that great. Guy gets cursed by Native American snake God. Been there, done that. It’s like they always told us in the Army, “Don’t fuck with the locals”. After a couple of stories in this book I can see how that can be sound advice.

“Clark Ashton Smith” is represented here in “The Hunters from Beyond”. This is doubly odd in that it is set in modern times, which smith didn’t do much of, and it is basically Smith’s version of HPL’s “Pickman’s Model”. It’s one of those “Weird, arrogant, bohemian artist sculpture guy who does sculptures of girls getting abused by other worldly monster thingies and no one has any idea from where he gets his ideas and his best friend finds out much to his chagrin and dismay”. I guess that you know what I mean.

“The Opener of the Way” is a pretty good Robert Bloch story about an ill fated Egyptian Archaeological dig that goes very very wrong. What I found as a real plus in this story is that there is no of the typical humour or pun ending that marked a lot of Mr. Bloch’s later stories.

Well that’s it for this week. Even though several of these stories have been anthologized over and over, this is still a very entertaining anthology ,that for it’s time, offered the reader a lot of “new” stories and helped to (re)introduce some lesser know writers.

Thanks for stopping by!

Night Gaunts:

Out of what crypt they crawl, I cannot tell,But every night I see the rubbery things,Black, horned, and slender, with membranous wings,They come in legions on the north wind's swellWith obscene clutch that titillates and stings,Snatching me off on monstrous voyagingsTo grey worlds hidden deep in nightmare's well.

Over the jagged peaks of Thok they sweep,Heedless of all the cries I try to make,And down the nether pits to that foul lakeWhere the puffed shoggoths splash in doubtful sleep.But ho! If only they would make some sound,Or wear a face where faces should be found!

Montag, 6. Februar 2012

This weeks book come to us from the long ago, but not forgotten year of (November) 1975! When a fat paperback only cost you $1.50! I was working after school back then at “Newark Bargain Shoes” down on the Square. We were the cheapest shoe store in Newark that still offered full service to the customer. “No Ma’am, we don’t have those in size 8, but have you seen these Pumps that just came in?” It wasn’t a bad job and an hour's wages bought 2 books back then. Anyways, I digress.

The volume starts out with one of those treacly slices of Ray Bradbury small town Americana called “At midnight in the month of June” which turns quickly into a wicked cat and mouse serial killer story.

“At midnight, in the month of June,

I stand beneath the mystic moon.

An opiate vapor, dewy, dim,

Exhales from out her golden rim…”

E.A. Poe

The list goes on and on.

Karl Edward Wagner’s “Sticks”is included here for the first time. It has since become

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